Sword Fighting and the Competetive Spirit

Two weeks ago I felt like I needed a change, something new to do with my time. My wife suggested kumdo (Korean sword fighting/martial art). I've always wanted to take up kumdo but I thought my lack of Korean would be a problem...but the next day we went to a local kumdo school and signed me up for a month. Now I go to practice every weekday at 11:00 and it's a lot of fun and good exercise. Kumdo is a lot like the Japanese sport, kendo, although in my school we don't fight each other but just practice stances, strikes and movement.

It seems that I've been learning pretty well the last 2 weeks as I'm the only student in my class so I get a lot of attention. The instructor's English is just good enough that he can teach me the basics. This week he told me that I have to come next weekend for a test to get my yellow belt...the first step of many towards a black belt. I'm quite nervous about it as there will be many students there, mostly children, who will watch. There will be 3 kumdo instructors evaluating my performance as well. It's not just the fact that I will be tested in front of an audience but also how different I will be compared to other students and I'm sure I will get a lot of stares and snickers because I'll be the only big, hairy white man in a group of 20 little Korean kids, each of us waiting for our turn to be tested. As I am taking my first test, I will be behind almost all of the children in my training. My instructor says it takes about a year of daily practice to attain the level of blackbelt in kumdo.

I have lost 6 kg in 2.5 months by going to the gym as well as going to kumdo. My instructor keeps telling me though to lose weight. It's understandable as he's my instructor but I also hear that at least once per week from my students or just any odd stranger I happen to meet. Sometimes it gets on my nerves as in Canada it's not something you usually talk about but my students here seem to have no problem with saying "Teacha, you fat. Dietuh." I'm not sure what to think about it as there are definitely more overweight people in Canada per capita than in Korea which is not good, but usually people are polite about the subject. In Korea, most people are quite thin (although weight is quickly becoming a problem in the younger generation) but if one of my students is just a little bigger than average, the other students will call him/her terrible names.

Yesterday I asked one class, "Who is your social science teacher?" One of the girls said, "The fat man". I couldn't think of a fat teacher in the school...but then I thought it must be the short, stocky teacher. He's got a little bit of a gut but he's not fat. Sometimes I think it's because of the language barrier that students use the word "fat" when they really mean "stocky" or another word but it does seem that when they use the word "fat" there is a certain tone they use...the tone of someone who looks down on another. I see this attitude often from my students in different ways too such as in academics. If one student isn't as quick as the others, they let him/her know. There seems to be a competetive quality to Koreans that causes them to constantly compare themselves to others. Students are taught from an early age that their grades are very important and they compete with each other through school and then university and then for jobs. Maybe this competitive attitude helps them in school or business (many of my middle school students alread know what career they want to pursue, while I still don't) but sometimes I wish my students could turn it off their desire to get an edge or one-up their classmates (and teachers) and just be children who are happy with who they are.